You don’t need to spend much time in Oregon’s Spectacular Coast Range before stumbling on a shooting pit; they’re everywhere. It’s truly amazing the stuff that people shoot up. TLRC has seen computers, major appliances, water heaters, cars of course, R&B vinyl records etc., etc. Even once a teddy bear. That was a bit much in TLRC’s opinion. Places with the best views seem to draw the shotgunners, likely because of how cool it is to throw clays off into space. Lot’s of fire rings in those spots too.

By an informal and nonscientific sample, TLRC concludes that for rifles, 7.62×39 ammo is the most popular, followed by 5.65×45. Does it follow that there are more AK-47’s out there than there are AR-15 variants? Or do the AK boys just shoot

The Brass Family enjoying the view in Oregon’s Spectacular Coast Range, (l-r), Mr. Brass (5.65×45, for AR-15 and variants), Mrs. Brass (7.62×39, for AK-47’s and variants), Baby Brass (9mm, for more kinds of pistols than there are stars in the sky).

more? Maybe the ammo is cheaper. For pistols there is WAY more 9mm out there than anything else, .40SW, .38/.357 or certainly 45ACP. What, TLRC muses, does this say about the patriotism of our clearcut gunners? Why so much Cold War enemy hardware and effete Euro-ACP? How is that one almost never finds brass from America’s Gun, the 1911 .45?

Anyway, to the TLRC plan. He is keeping a secret map of all these places so that after the apocalypse when supplies of lead, copper and tin are gone, he can ride a donkey out to his little treasure houses and “harvest” these precious materials and keep the world supplied, and himself in an advantageous bartering position. In the meantime he is putting out some feelers (kickstarter, and a few venture capitalists he knows from his former days in the mineral industries and in Silicon Valley) so that by starting a base metal localvore movement, TLRC can make beaucoup bucks, while rendering moot such monstrosities as the Pebble Creek Mine.